The platform container and the platform based container are more and more widely used in multimodal transport of freight due to the convenience of loading and unloading a freight and a large loading capacity, the structure of which mainly comprises a floor 1′, a loading platform and end structures provided at two ends of the floor, which can be divided into two kinds of structure, i.e. fixed end structure and foldable end structure.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, it shows a currently used container which is collapsible (usually, referred to as a collapsible container for short), the end structure of which is merely limited to be unidirectional folded, namely, the end wall 2′ merely being folded in one direction (folded towards the direction of the floor 1′ of the container), and not being folded in a direction opposite to the one direction. This folding is realized by the existing hinge used for a collapsible container, and the main purpose of this unidirectional foldable end structure is to decrease the cost of stocking and transporting an empty container.
As illustrated in FIG. 2, a currently common collapsible container hinge 3′ (FIG. 1) comprises: an outer hinge 30′ comprised of two parallel plates, an inner hinge 31′ provided within the outer hinge 30′ and connected to the outer hinge 30′ by means of a pivoting pin 33′, a hinge top plate 32′ provided on top of the outer hinge 30′, and a conical pin 34′ for locking the inner hinge 31′ and the outer hinge 30′; a notch 320′ is provided on the hinge top plate 32′ to contain the inner hinge 31′, locking holes 301′ and 311′ are correspondingly provided on the outer hinge 30′ and the inner hinge 31′. When the end wall is required to be set upright, the conical pin 34′ goes through the locking holes 301′ and 311′, thereby locking the inner hinge 31′ and the outer hinge 30′; when the end wall is required to be folded toward inside of the container body, the conical pin 34′ is pulled out of the locking holes 301′ and 311′ and the inner hinge 31′ is folded towards inside of the container body around the pivoting pin 33′.
However, during the container transporting, it is usually to transport some special products, such as motor vehicles etc, and for these products, a ramp is often need to load and unload these products. The present existing solutions is to use a removed end wall of the collapsible container as a ramp, namely, the end wall is removed from the floor at first and is placed horizontally in a direction opposite to its initial direction, then one end of the end wall is placed on the floor, and the other end of the end wall is placed on the ground, and the end wall is needed to orient and fix. It is necessary to use auxiliary equipments such as a crane or a forklift to carry out the above method, which is neither safe nor convenient, and cause the high-cost of freight load and time-consuming.